Zimmerman, Trayvon, and Manliness

Jul 12, 2013

RUSH: Get this. This is actually a very provocative piece on the Zimmerman case. It is found today in the American Spectator, one of my all-time favorite journals of opinion. It’s written by a man named Daniel J. Flynn. It’s about the Zimmerman case. And the headline of this piece is really good, and it’s provocative itself. It gives you an indication what the story is about. “Two Males, No Men.”

“Two Males, No Men.” And the premise of Mr. Flynn’s piece is that the real reason Trayvon Martin was shot is that we don’t have any real men anymore in America. Now a series of pull quotes from the story to give you flavor for the piece. Mr. Flynn says: “The proper response to an assault by a 158-pound teenager isnÂ’t to scream for help or grab for a gun. It is to punch back or better yet subdue and issue a spanking.”

Another pull quote: “Their households lacked strong male role models; their society, even more so. Four in ten American kids enter the world without their father married to their mother. When schoolboys begin to exhibit traits natural to their sex, the energetic fellows earn the wrath of detention and Ritalin.” Frankly, folks, this is becoming a more acceptable reaction to all of this ADD and ADHD stuff. And this pull quote is right on the money. “Four in ten American kids enter the world without their father married to their mother. When schoolboys begin to exhibit traits natural to their sex,” which the feminists have been trying to wipe out since the late sixties and early seventies. Natural male traits were portrayed as predator, brutish, inhuman, insensitive, unfeeling, brutal, violent.

Men could not be trusted with their own children, particularly their own daughters. Men behaving as they are naturally predestined to behave has earned the wrath of detention at school and the drug Ritalin to calm them down. “Any game that highlights contact — from dodgeball to football — comes under attack. Primetime television celebrates the fop and makes a buffoon out of fathers (see Simpson, Homer; Everybody Loves, Raymond). Jobs relying on the physical characteristics favored in males have been outsourced to robots and foreigners. … Civilizing men out of existence has come at great cost to civilization. Instead of men, we get feminine imitations lacking beauty. We get lost boys compensating by becoming barbarians. We get Sanford, Florida.”

“They don’t make men like they used to,” begins Daniel J. Flynn in his piece. “One can consult a Danish study that shows plummeting testosterone levels for scientific confirmation of this. Or, one could more easily turn on any cable news networkÂ’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Zimmerman-Martin case, a tragedy involving two males fumbling in the dark on how to be men. Whatever the protagonists may be guilty of they are surely innocent of being men.”

Neither one was a man.

“The six female jurors, not tasked to reach a verdict on the manhood of the central players, nevertheless know the truth of this more than other trial observers. The Venusians know the Martians better than they know themselves. And vice versa — what do they know of x chromosomes who only x chromosomes know? On the maturity count, Trayvon Martin might reasonably plead not guilty by reason of chronology. Seventeen-year-old boys quite often act like, in the vernacular of Zimmerman, ‘f-ing punks.’ Most grow out of it, but Mr. Martin unfortunately will not get that chance. Rarely, in spite of their exaggerated masculine posturing, do teenage boys behave as mature males.

“MartinÂ’s Twitter feed reads as a parody of poor grammar and an even more impoverished vocabulary. There, heÂ’s a ‘No Limit N-gga,’ girls he knows are ‘bitches’ and ‘hoes,’ and the primary extracurricular activity he immerses himself in is marijuana. The gold-teeth smile, the tattoos, the ten-day suspension from school, and all the rest appear as pathetic attempts to assert his virility. Yet, as his supporters point out, Trayvon also liked Skittles and Chuck E. CheeseÂ’s. The presentation that Trayvon affected and the Trayvon that his supporters present are, like so many making the journey from adolescence to adulthood, at war internally.

“George Zimmerman, in contrast, projects a courtroom image of a meek pudgeball who wouldnÂ’t (couldnÂ’t?) hurt a fly — and not in a Norman Bates way. Perhaps this is the effect that his lawyers intended. But it jibes with what we know. According to one unidentified witness, Zimmerman endured a domineering motherÂ’s frequent beatings and a docile father who failed to stick up for his kids. His mixed-martial arts instructor described him as ‘physically soft,’ a student who lacked athleticism and ‘didnÂ’t know how to really effectively punch.'”

May I interrupt myself here for a moment? I have to make an observation. I just noticed it again today. Every time you’ve seen Zimmerman seated in the courtroom, what have you thought? What has your reaction been to Zimmerman seated there? Do you know that the lawyers are counseling him to sit that way? Show no emotion whatsoever. Don’t even appear to be engaged in any of this. Don’t crack a smile. Don’t make any facial expressions. Just stare straight ahead. Don’t make eye contact with anybody.

Now, there are jury consultants on this case, and the lawyers telling Zimmerman, look, you gotta behave in a certain way. We got six jurors. They’re all women, and we’ve got a TV camera in here. And Mr. Flynn may have a point. It may well be that the sum total of the advice Zimmerman’s getting adds up to “Don’t look like a man. Look like the Pillsbury Doughboy in there. Look like you couldn’t hurt a flea. Look like you’re harmless. Look like you’re a schlub, because anything else may offend the jurors. Anything else may offend the media watching who would then issue commentary. Anything else might frighten and off put.”

Look at me. I am told that just speaking like this frightens 24-year-old women. And probably 23- and 22-year-old women. Being forceful, being opinionated. Let me give you another example. I showed up, I appeared on The Five on Fox on Tuesday afternoon. And as you know, I affectionately refer to Andrea Tantaros as Andrea Tarantula. Now, some in the audience I’m sure got it and understood the joke. But I know full well that a huge number of people have no idea why in the world I would call her Andrea Tarantula.

So I knew it was coming. I knew I was gonna get the question when I learned that she was on the show that day. And, sure enough, she asked me. And in the question that she asked, she said (paraphrasing), “Now, Bob Beckel says I’ve got great legs, but I’ve only got two of them. I don’t have eight.” So it was assumed by some that I was making a comment about her legs when I was talking about Andrea Tarantula. But in answering her question I said, “Andrea, I’ll be glad to answer it, but to a number of people the answer is going to be entirely sexist, because, you see, I come from an era long ago, where a man could be a man and stereotypical humor didn’t offend anybody.”

I said, “Andrea, what is a tarantula? A spider. What do spiders do? Well, in the case of the black widow spider, what do they do? After mating with the male, they kill the male. Right?” I said, “Andrea, you come off to me as a dominant, confident, in-control, take-no-prisoners persona.” So she ended up being complimented by it, but was unable to get there just by my calling her a spider, a tarantula. I chose tarantula because it goes with Tantaros, which is her real last name.

But I know that even telling you why I call her — do you realize, of all the liberal caves and enclaves where they have people in their pajamas listening to this program, do you realize how many of them are just outraged right now that I would even think this way? But there is, and this is what Mr. Flynn’s point is. There aren’t any men anymore. Being a man is a crime. Being a man is something that the powerful institutions in the country are trying to weed out of our culture. Because it’s dangerous, it’s predatory, it’s brutish, it’s barbaric. And this is a direct descendant from the feminist movement.

Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream — and Why It Matters, and it is excellent. I’ll tell you, this is something that more and more people need to seriously think about, the whole concept of “manly” is being erased from our culture. That’s been going on for quite a while. It has serious, serious consequences, and we’re living them. So her book is Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream — and Why It Matters, by Dr. Helen Smith.